International Law: The First Casualty of the Drone War
A comprehensive legal analysis of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan
By Max Kantar
December 14, 2009 – This report utilizes well-established principles of both treaty and customary international law as a measuring stick for attempting to determine the legal and moral legitimacy of the covert U.S. policy of using drones to attack targets in Pakistan. This analysis is unique in that it uses both broad assessments as well as pertinent individual case studies with the purpose of chronicling the details of several drone attacks over a period of 45 months in the interest of legal evaluation. Drawing from a vast collection of reliable press reports, independent human rights testimonies, and the most prominent, mainstream studies, this report is quite possibly the most comprehensive analysis on the topic to date and likely the first of its kind to appear in the wake of the US-Pakistan drone controversy…

Vanunu and Israel’s Undeclared Nukes
By Eileen Fleming
December 14, 2009 – Mordechai Vanunu was released from Ashkelon prison to open air captivity in east Jerusalem on April 21, 2004, after 18 years, mostly all in solitary confinement. In 1986, Vanunu had been clubbed, drugged, bound and kidnapped from Rome by the Mossad because he told the truth and provided the photographic proof of Israel’s clandestine seven-story underground WMD facility in the Negev. After returning Vanunu to Israel, the whistleblower was treated as a traitor and locked away, while few protests were heard from the United States despite the significance of his evidence regarding Israel’s undeclared arsenal of nuclear weapons…

Ancient Babylonian city left unattended in Iraq
By Shayma Adel
December 14, 2009 – Iraq’s Tall Harmal, site of the old Babylonian city of Shadupum, has been left unguarded since the 2003-U.S. invasion of Iraq. The site, in the outskirts of Baghdad, was fenced and seen as one of the country’s most important ancient landmarks prior to the invasion. Only recently the Antiquities Department has remember Harmal, where Iraq’s most renowned archaeologist Taha Baqer had unearthed an ancient library of about 300 cuneiform documents in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Baqer did not only excavate the city but reconstructed some of its most important buildings where visitors could feel, touch and even smell the grandeur of a Babylonian site. This highly significant site was left unattended “because of lack of financial resources”, according to Abdulzahra al-Talaqani, the department’s spokesman. Ordinary people could enter the site and illegal digs have been reported to have taken place there…

Obama’s Dirty War
By Douglas Valentine
December 14, 2009 – …In his recent speeches, President Obama defines America’s objectives in Afghanistan as: 1) suppressing the Taliban and national resistance forces to American occupation and the Karzai regime; 2) eliminating several score members of Al Qaeda; and 3) creating a stable pro-American government and economic infrastructure. David Galula, author of Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (RAND Corporation, 1964) and a recognized authority on the matter, stresses that counterinsurgency includes “building or rebuilding a political apparatus within the population.” In this sense any counterinsurgency is, in reality, an insurgency. In Afghanistan, the Taliban ruled for several years until the U.S. and the CIA-backed Northern Alliance drove them out. Obama may define the Taliban as the insurgents, but the Taliban, who control many parts of Afghanistan, view the Americans as backing an insurgency against Taliban rule…

Academic Boycott of Israel And the Complicity of Israeli Academic Institutions in Occupation of Palestinian Territories
The Alternative Information Center
December 14, 2009 – Academic Boycott of Israel and the Complicity of Israeli Academic Institutions in Occupation of Palestinian Territories
The idea of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as means of struggle against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories has gathered pace in the years following the second intifada, and all the more so since the Israeli siege and attacks on the Gaza strip. As academics and students tend to be among the most politically active and aware populations, it was only natural that one of the types of boycott at the forefront of the BDS campaign is the academic boycott. First publicly called for in 2002, academic boycott campaigns against Israeli academic institutions have become a controversial issue in various universities and academic communities around the world. While proponents of the boycott argued for it as an effective way struggle against the occupation, the legitimacy of an academic boycott has been disputed even by some in the left-wing ranks who believe it’s effects are too severe…

Israeli minister Moshe Ya’alon turned down UK visit over arrest fears
Vice-prime minister pulled out of fundraising event after being warned he could be held on suspicion of war crimes
James Meikle
December 14, 2009 – Moshe Ya’alon, the Israeli deputy prime minister and strategic affairs minister, turned down an invitation to appear at a London fundraising event last month after he was warned he might face arrest on suspicion of war crimes. His decision, reported in October, came a week after lawyers for 16 Palestinians failed to persuade a British court to issue an arrest warrant for Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence and deputy prime minister, over Israel’s war in Gaza this January. Barak, whose visit included addressing a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference in Brighton, was regarded as having diplomatic immunity…

If Banksters Are Like Gangsters, Where’s the Anti-Bankster Legislation?
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
December 14, 2009 – It’s in the House of Representatives right now. “Nothing on the calendar of Congress, and no campaign from the grassroots, has anything approaching the potential of the Federal Reserve Transparency Act to focus public anger on Wall Street and its allies in the White House and on Capitol Hill.” If the public only knew the dimensions of the largest transfer of wealth in human history, they would turn on the banksters with tooth and claw…

Holocaust Survivor Talks About Obama’s Peace Prize
by Hedy Epstein
December 14, 2009 – …As President Obama accepts a Peace Prize he does not deserve, it’s a good time to model what real peacemaking looks like. That’s why-at the ripe age of 85-I’ll be joining the Gaza Freedom March on December 31. Over 1,000 peacemakers from around the world will join hands with 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza as we walk together to the Israeli border. As Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, and members of many faiths we will come together as one humanity to condemn the brutal invasion of Gaza one year ago and demand that Israel lift the siege that has brought 1.5 million people to the brink of disaster. You can show your support for real peacemaking by endorsing the Gaza Freedom March and telling your friends and community about this historic event! Around the globe, solidarity actions are already being planned for the week of December 27th—find one near you and join in the action!..

Iraq snapshot – December 14, 2009
The Common Ills
December 14, 2009 – Chaos and violence continue, a War Hawk re-enters stage center, faux ‘peace’ ‘activist’ Tom Hayden finds a new way to disgrace himself (and who would have thought that was possible). On the latest Inside Iraq (Al Jazeera), Jasim Azawi was joined by the Iraqi National Movement Saleh al-Mutlaq, the KRG’s Mohammed Ihsan and Dr. Wamidh Nadhmi (Baghdad University) to discuss the issue of the Baghdad attacks which have led to a “Bloody Wednesday” in August, a “Bloody Sunday” in October and a “Bloody Tuesday” last week…